Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., was defeated on Tuesday by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell in what ended up being the second most expensive primary election in history.
In the weeks before Tuesday's vote, United Democracy Project, the campaign arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent $8 million on Bell's behalf. The race for Missouri's 1st District was overshadowed in spending only by the primary election in New York's 16th District in June, where AIPAC helped defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who like Bush is a progressive member of the "Squad" and a critic of Israel.
AIPAC, which targets candidates they deem too critical of Israel and its war in Gaza, sought to make examples of Bush and Bowman this cycle, testing the theory that knocking off two especially vulnerable incumbents saddled with missteps would send the right message. News outlets called the race for Bell, who leads Bush 51.2 to 45.6 percent as of Wednesday morning, hours after polls closed.
“I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people of this district have placed in me,” Bell said in a statement. “This victory belongs to every volunteer, every supporter, and every voter who believes in our vision for a better future.”
Bell, the elected lead prosecutor in St. Louis County, initially sought the Democratic nomination to confront first-term Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., but later changed his mind and ran against Bush instead. Though he was backed by AIPAC money and some donors who also contributed to Republicans, Bell campaigned as a progressive who would be a more effective legislator than Bush. Attacks on Bush over her vote against the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and missed votes for other legislation dominated the airwaves, but the progressive lawmaker narrowed the final vote margin with an effective grassroots organizing campaign that previously helped her beat incumbent Rep. Lacy Clay in the 2020 primary.
Bush, who raised $2 million to withstand the heavy spending against her, also counted on the support of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., while Bell got the endorsement of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. AIPAC and its allies bombarded the St. Louis metro area with digital and mail ads supporting Bell and attacking Bush, but true to its playbook hardly mentioned Israel or Palestine.
But the candidates themselves did spar over the issue. In October 2023, Bush called Israel's invasion of Gaza an "ethnic cleansing campaign" and wrote on social media that “collective punishment against Palestinians for Hamas’s actions is a war crime.” She declined to call Hamas a terrorist organization at the time, a position she reiterated in the days ahead of the primary election.
"We were called terrorists during Ferguson," she said of herself and other activists who protested the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager. "Have they hurt people? Absolutely. Has the Israeli military hurt people? Absolutely."
Bell called those comments "wrong and offensive." Bush responded by criticizing Bell's reliance on outside money, a trait shared by pro-Israel challengers this election cycle; she did so again Tuesday evening in a speech to her supporters.
“Whether I’m congresswoman or not, I’m still taking care of my people,” she said. “Because your side is so weak, you had to spend $19 million.”
Bush also came under scrutiny for what some residents of her district called unresponsive constituent services, an accusation that also hurt Bowman in his election. She was also criticized for using campaign funds to hire a private security detail that included her own husband, fueling allegations of corruption. Even after the Department of Justice launched an investigation, Bush continued to keep him on her payroll.
Both candidates emerged as public figures from the police killing of Brown and subsequent unrest. Bush took a leading role in the Black Lives Matter protests, becoming a fierce critic of police conduct towards Black Americans. Bell, a private lawyer at the time, began holding meetings about community policing before running against and defeating Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, who failed to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown and claimed self-defense. Bell reopened the examination but ultimately decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge him. Brown's father later starred in a Bush ad accusing Bell of "[using] my family for power."
"And now he's trying to sell out St. Louis," he continued.
The race also featured some positive campaigning. Bush touted her role in bringing $2 billion to the 1st District and said that her protest on the steps of the Capitol in 2021 helped extend the federal eviction moratorium for thousands of her constituents. Bell focused on his record as a prosecutor, which included setting up programs to divert people with mental health and substance abuse problems towards treatment instead of jail and expanding efforts to examine potential cases of wrongful conviction.
The Bush-Bell race is likely to be the last test for AIPAC this cycle. They declined to campaign against other Squad members such as Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, N.Y., who all cruised to re-election.
